From: Allen Thomson <thomsona@flash.net>
Newsgroups: alt.war.nuclear
Subject: Re: NMD test fails!
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2000 18:20:36 GMT

In article <co0a5.2540$J7.24953@grover.nit.gwu.edu>,

  Dwayne Allen Day <wayneday@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> wrote:

> There were apparently people in CIA in the early 1980s (i.e. before
> Star Wars really got going) who were looking at the trend data and
> saw that they were in big trouble.

True. I was there and saw it, can confirm that many people knew that
the Soviets were in considerable economic and societal trouble.  But,
however, nobody knew what it meant for the future.

An example: I was on the small drafting team that wrote the Interagency
Intelligence Assessment, "Possible Soviet Responses to the US Strategic
Defense Initiative", now declassified and available at
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/offdocs/m8310017.htm.  Being a
technical intelligence analyst in the Office of Scientific and Weapons
Research, I was unqualified to have a professional opinion about the
Soviet economy, but had certainly read enough "it's in trouble" reports.

Accordingly, trying to get inputs to the assessment, I put in some
placeholder no-brainer lines such as, "If they attempted to deploy new
advanced systems not presently planned, while continuing their overall
planned force modernization, significant additional levels of spending
would be required. This would place substantial additional pressures on
the Soviet economy and confront the leadership with difficult policy
choices."

Going around to the economic analysts to try them to provide more in-
depth comments and projections, it turned out that no-one was willing
to do so.  So the placeholders remained in place as the best and
coordinated judgement of the Intelligence Community.

> So some people  argue that the handwriting was on the wall before
> Star Wars really got moving.

Yeah, and maybe it was -- but written in an obscure language, and
containing a message few were willing to accept.  I guarantee that if
someone had gotten up in a National Intelligence Estimate coordination
meeting in 1983 or 1985 and said that the Soviet Union had even a
miniscule chance of collapse, they'd have been branded a kook. Look at
the "responses" document, and you'll see such expressions as "In the
far term, from 2005 onward, the Soviets will be able not only to refine
responsive measures taken earlier..."  This is by no means unique, as
examination of declassified NIEs of the period will show.

IOW, we didn't have a clue what was coming.


> Second, it is not clear how much the Soviets were spending on their
> own Star Wars program and countermeasures to the US SDIO.  How much
> was this compared to their overall military budget?  I have the
> feeling that it was not that much more.  So it is probably hard to
> argue that they started  spending more that hastened their demise.

Correct. They had quite an extensive and diverse directed energy
program dating back to the late 1960s, plus other R&D stuff.  But
compared to tanks, missiles, airplanes, submarines, ships, people, etc,
it wasn't a big part of the budget.

> Perhaps the better issue to look at is how the US SDIO plan affected
> them from a psychological standpoint.  They may have determined that
> they simply could not keep up with the US (perhaps viewing this as
> yet another lunar landing challenge that they would lose) and this
> undercut their morale.  Thus, it might not have "hastened" their
> demise, but removed some of the fighting spirit that might have
> allowed more hard-liners to hold on
> longer.


This is pretty much my own sense of the matter.  Even at the time, we
asked ourselves, "Why are the Soviets getting so spun up about SDI,
which won't bear fruit for many years, maybe decades?"  It could well
be that they were not driven into bankruptcy, but rather a lethal
nervous breakdown.  Whatever: it's the results that counted.

From: Allen Thomson <thomsona@flash.net>
Newsgroups: alt.war.nuclear
Subject: Re: NMD test fails!
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 14:57:27 GMT

In article <8kafpd$62u$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Allen Thomson <thomsona@flash.net> wrote:
> In article <co0a5.2540$J7.24953@grover.nit.gwu.edu>,
>
>   Dwayne Allen Day <wayneday@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> wrote:
>

> > So some people  argue that the handwriting was on the wall before
> > Star Wars really got moving.
>
> Yeah, and maybe it was -- but written in an obscure language, and
> containing a message few were willing to accept.  I guarantee that if
> someone had gotten up in a National Intelligence Estimate coordination
> meeting in 1983 or 1985 and said that the Soviet Union had even a
> miniscule chance of collapse, they'd have been branded a kook. Look at
> the "responses" document, and you'll see such expressions as "In the
> far term, from 2005 onward, the Soviets will be able not only to
> refine  responsive measures taken earlier..."  This is by no means
> unique, as examination of declassified NIEs of the period will show.


Just to follow up on the last point: If you look at the 41-page "Key
Judgements and Summary" volume of NIE 11-3/8-82, "Soviet Capabilities
for Strategic Nuclear Conflict, 1982-1992," published on 15 February
1983, you find that the total discussion on possible economic
constraints is in a single paragraph on p.17:

"Other factors that could potentially influence future Soviet strategic
forces are domestic economic difficulties and foreign policy setbacks.
In general, however, we do not believe that these latter factors will
bear significantly on the size and composition of future Soviet
strategic forces beccause of the high priority the Soviets place on
such forces."

That's it. The language was approved without dissent by CIA, DIA, the
State Department, NSA, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.